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Benny McClenahan arrived always with four girls. They were never quite the same ones in physical person, but they were so identical one with another that it inevitably seemed they had been there before.
A part of a paragraph from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
In physical person, is this a variant of in person? And were in the physical sense used instead, what would be the difference?
I believe it has nothing to do with the phrase in person, which means that an interaction will happen in the presence of other people. This is in contrast with talking over the phone, et cetera.
Instead, I think he's referring to their physical appearance. He seems to be saying, they were never quite the same in appearance, but they were identical in all other ways.
That's just from a grammatical point of view. From a literary point of view, it's interesting, too. Usually we try to look past appearances to see the person underneath. But here, ironically, he has nothing else to look at than their appearances for proof that they are different people.
